Album review: ‘The Sunset Canyoneers’

There’s a wholesomeness to the Sunset Canyoneers’ self-titled debut album, and I can’t quite tell if it works for or against the sun-worshipping California country music outfit. The album’s motif is purposefully and perfectly reminiscent of the Bakersfield Sound that came about in the mid-1950s, influencing a hippie country music scene that gave rise to the likes of The Byrds, Buck Owens, the Grateful Dead, and Emmylou Harris. The Bakersfield Sound took from the old honky-tonks and stole from the then-new electrified rock’n’roll to create a music style in defiant response to the clean and prim acts of the orchestral Nashville Sound (think Patsy Cline, Dolly Parton, Kenny Rogers) – which itself was a volley against the dirty, grimy noise of the rock and rollers who had suddenly infiltrated decent white folks’ ears. It was country music fighting with itself while rock enjoyed an easy and uncontested run of the airwaves.

This is where that wholesomeness works counter to the aim of the Sunset Canyoneers, as they explicitly display Bakersfield influence by incorporating honky-tonk music made with ‘lectric twangs and rattle instead of the strictly acoustic instruments that Nashville Sound musicians clung to along with their horns and violins. However, the band’s crisp choral singalongs are straight Nashville, making the album feel more like a harmonistic celebration and ode to the genre of Bakersfield Sound than something organically of it. The record never really reaches the rowdy, rutty thoughtfulness or depths of, say, Merle Haggard and the Strangers.

However, it’s fun in the way that a They Might Be Giants country excursion can be. The Sunset Canyoneers possess an infectiously chipper attitude, and their upbeat rhythms have the jolly power to get me earnestly toe-tapping. It’s an album that services a lively social mingling, but not one that you’d want to sit down with alone. It releases March 6 under the You Are The Cosmos label.

Jody Callahan